"Sureness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there came to her the vision of Greatheart—Greatheart the valiant—her knight of the golden armour, going before her, strong to defend,—invincible, unafraid, sure by means of that sureness which is given only to those who draw upon a Higher Power than their own, given only to the serving-men ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... asked himself, complacently, that gave her such a delicate distinction? Her grey dress, and soft grey hat, were, he supposed, perfect of their kind. But Oxford in the summer term was full of pretty dresses. No, it must be her ease, her sureness of herself that banished any awkward self-consciousness both in herself and her companions, and allowed a man to ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... like to be informed of the grounds of this sureness. The marked rejection of spontaneous generation—the statement of a belief that all animals have descended from four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number, or, perhaps, if constrained to it by analogy, "from some one primordial ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... to run straight at all hazards, but cautiously to assure himself with his setting-pole where the main current was, and keep steadily to that. He is still in wild water, but we have faith that his skill and sureness of eye will bring him out right ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the sleet stings) Upon the lightheart-hope which only clear sight knows. And slowly drifts, Lingering among the snows Nor, though the snow lifts, Ever goes The wistful heartache as the fresh Spring flows With slipping sureness to the time of the rose, and the withered rose. Down here the hawthorn.... And heaping blossom stirred By a joy-swift bird. White mists are blinding me, White mist of hedgerow, white mist of wings. The bird's flight flings Deep carpetings Over the ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... account of the general situation in South Africa addressed by Lord Milner to Mr. Chamberlain from Capetown on February 6th, 1901. Among all the notable documents which he furnished to his official chief, none affords more convincing evidence of cool judgment, mastery of South African conditions, and sureness of statecraft than this. It is a letter, and not a despatch, and as such it contains some personal details which would not have found a place in more ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... the manoir while her husband was painting, and marvelled at the ease and sureness with which the Russian installed herself, her only helpers being the stupid peasants, who seemed to understand no language ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... back her theme "that should never have gone in," and to ask permission to try again. But Miss Raymond had been up betimes, working over her new batch of papers, and she met Eleanor's apologies with amused approval of sophomores, who, contrary to the popular tradition about their cock- sureness, were inclined to underestimate their abilities, and imagine, like freshmen before midyears, that their work was below grade. So there was nothing for Eleanor to do but submit gracefully and leave the theme. It did not occur to her to caution Miss Raymond ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... with grim industry and a sureness of judgment born of his thorough knowledge of range work. There was the winnowing process which left the bigger, stronger calves in charge of two men, at a line camp known locally as Ten Mile, and took the younger ones on to the home ranch, where hay and shelter were more ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... this moment of geniality, "Obedience and no explanations" was written all over him. He was a man who believed his acceptable importance to be a verity established beyond the pale of challenge. Yet there was something lacking—a sureness of refinement, a last considerateness. With the first word he had spoken, Tabs had detected that he ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... of authority, and the same self-willed preference for his own not too well-educated opinion, which brought him to grief in his encounter with Wallis. But when he had once left his starting points, his sureness of reasoning, his extreme perspicacity, and the unerring clearness and certainty with which he kept before him, and expressed exactly what he meant, made him at once one of the greatest thinkers and one of the greatest writers of England. Hobbes never "pays himself with ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... had her thoughts as well as Malcolm. Already life was not what it had been to her, and the feeling of a difference is often what sets one a-thinking first. While her father lived, and the sureness of his love overarched her consciousness with a heaven of safety, the physical harmony of her nature had supplied her with a more than sufficient sense of well being. Since his death, too, there had been times when she even fancied ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... had betaken themselves to their horses. This she knew was consonant to the practice of the Welsh marauders, who, although the small size and slightness of their nags made them totally unfit for service in battle, availed themselves of their activity and sureness of foot to transport them with the necessary celerity to and from the scenes of their rapine; ensuring thus a rapid and unperceived approach, and a secure and speedy retreat. These animals traversed without difficulty, and beneath the load of a heavy soldier, the wild mountain paths by ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... a tale of love subduing and purifying the savage instincts in man—her art advanced in sureness and in strength. Singularly accessible to external influences, singularly receptive of ideas, the full significance and relations of which she failed to comprehend, she felt the force of intelligences ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... myself put on an aeger and seen others similarly afflicted, so that I can describe it with equal certainty more than the narrative of another not having done so, but relying on the incredibility of historians more than the sureness ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... the soldier-teacher. "It's lucky for you sexton pupils there was one among you could reply; for, with all your cock-sureness, you were about to lose ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... overcome things which, at first sight, appear impossible. Indeed, what is there above man's exertions? Unwearied determination will enable him to run with the horse, to swim with the fish, and assuredly to compete with the chamois and the goat in agility and sureness of foot. To scale the rock was merely child's play for the Edinbro' callants. It was my own favourite diversion. I soon found that the rock contained all manner of strange crypts, crannies, and recesses, where owls nestled, and the weasel brought forth ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... for it was a hard and very mocking laugh. I had always attributed that sort of reply to an artifice which the occasion required. It was intended, I thought, to accentuate the danger she incurred and the contempt that she felt for it, thanks to the sureness of the thrower's hands, and so I was very much surprised when the mountebank said ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... and the intriguing complexities of Roy, a breath of Lance would be tonic as a breeze from the Hills. He was so clear and sure; not in flashes and spurts, but continuously, like sunshine; because the clearness and sureness had his whole personality behind them. And he could be counted on to deal faithfully with Roy; perhaps lure him back to the Punjab. It would be sad losing him; but in the distracting circumstances, a clean cut seemed the only solution. She would just put in a word to that effect: ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... who have committed an offense will be apprehended and always made to pay the penalty for their crimes. Toward the achievement of this ideal we have as yet done very little. We are still woefully behind such a country as England, where justice is administered with relative rapidity and sureness. Second, the reform of criminal procedure aims to prevent the law from bearing with undue weight upon the poor and ignorant. Here we are making greater progress. Let us notice what is being done to guarantee justice to ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson
... Bernini; and as the immediate influence of the great masters declined, painting acquired the same sort of character. The carelessness and rapidity of Tintoretto, which, in his case, proceeded from the lightning speed of his imagination and the unerring sureness of his brush, became a mechanical trick in the hands of superficial students. True art had migrated elsewhere—to the homes of Velasquez, Rubens, and Rembrandt. As art grew more pompous it became less emotional. ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... touching on the contents in order to keep within the narrow limits of this essay. A most superbly delicate delineation of the feminine soul is here given in the drawing of Hanka and Aagot; nowhere else is woman's love in its dawn and growth described with such mastery, with a deftness and sureness of touch which reminds one of the very greatest passages in that Danish classic, ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... Gods, many decline towards this unhappy kinship with the dead, few rise to the blessed kinship with the Divine. Since then every one must deal with each thing according to the view which he forms about it, those few who hold that they are born for fidelity, modesty, and unerring sureness in dealing with the things of sense, never conceive aught base or ignoble of themselves: but the multitude the contrary. Why, what am I?—A wretched human creature; with this miserable flesh of mine. Miserable indeed! but ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... arrange the little curls upon her forehead, then to take out and replace a hairpin or two, so as to fasten the golden mass behind a little more securely. The white fingers moved with an exquisite sureness and daintiness, the lifted arms showed all the young curves of ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to make you do more'n say it. I got to make sure you are it. Hell-fire won't take the sureness out of me ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... this: that we are able to get real knowledge about the mind. This may seem at first sight a useless question to raise, seeing that our minds are, in the thought of many, about the only things we are really sure of. But that sort of sureness is not what science seeks. Every science requires some means of investigation, some method of procedure, which is more exact than the mere say-so of common sense; and which can be used over and again by different investigators and under different conditions. This ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... conscience is set forth with admirable sureness of analysis, and the author has been able to represent with impressive intensity the mysterious fatality which demands the death of the ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... that, Mr. Cazalette?" I asked, feeling a bit restive under the old fellow's cock-sureness. ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... that I might. They felt so badly I just cried over both of them—howled. But I knew there was only one man in the world I could ever marry. I had made up my own mind for once and it was real easy, too. It's very delightful to feel so sure, and know it's your own sureness and ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... sign of having heard him, unless it was that her hands stopped for an instant in the deft rapidity of their task. Within a few seconds they had resumed their work, though, it seemed to him, with less sureness in the supple movement of the fingers. Beyond the upturned collar of her coat he saw the stealing of a warm, ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... skill with the hands is her work on the typewriter. Although she has used the typewriter since she was eleven years old, she is rather careful than rapid. She writes with fair speed and absolute sureness. Her manuscripts seldom contain typographical errors when she hands them to Miss Sullivan to read. Her typewriter has no special attachments. She keeps the relative position of the keys by an occasional touch of the little finger on the outer edge ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... breaking in upon the intimate silence, continued the talk, but it was with another note. The mute interval, filled with wind and darkness and the light of stars, had swung them up to a higher plane. She spoke with an artless sureness of comprehension—a certainty—they were close in spirit at that moment, and she was not frightened, not even conscious of it. "Why should the doctor worry? What is the matter? Marietta says the trouble with me is that I'm spoiled with ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... a critic. The most remarkable thing about his violent political prejudices is the success with which he dissociated his literary estimates from them. Such a serious limitation in a critic as deficiency of reading in his case only raises our astonishment at the sureness of instinct which enabled him to pronounce unerringly on the scantest information. Never was there a critic of nearly equal pretensions who had as little of the scholar's equipment. If, as he tells ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... have no difficulty in understanding how it is that we make our calling and election sure. It is not in the power of the elect to make their election surer in itself than it really is, for this is a sureness which is not capable of receiving any addition. It is not in the power of the elect to make it surer to God—for all futurity is submitted to his all-seeing eye, and his absolute knowledge stands in need of no confirmation. But there is such a thing as the elect being ignorant for a time ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... fuller than when we had last seen them bare. Then, to get the graceful, noble bearing of the Moors, she practised day after day carrying a pitcher of water on her head as they do, until she could do this with perfect ease and sureness. In this habit the Don, who was mightily pleased with her looks, took her to the house of his friend and employer, Sidi ben Ahmed, where she ingratiated herself so greatly with the women of his household that they would have her come to them again ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... whether she might be truly Mirdath. And I, utter weak and shaken strangely because of this splendour of fulfilment, could make no instant answer. And she asked again, but using mine old love-name, and with a sureness in her far voice. And still I was so strangely dumb, and the blood to thud peculiar in mine ears; and this to pass; and speech ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... and the master had absolutely refused, saying, "You beat them once, Hughie, and you can do it again." And as the days and weeks went on, Hughie fully justified the team's choice of him as captain. He developed a genius for organization, a sureness of judgment, and a tact in management, as well as a skill and speed in play, that won the confidence of every member of his team. He set himself resolutely to banish any remaining relics of the ancient style of play. In the old game every one rushed to hit the ball without regard ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... on the paper the men looked closely at the joinings of the box. They seemed rather puzzled in spite of the cock-sureness of ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... silent in her corner of the car, glancing intently at the old scenes that were so new and unexpected. From time to time she directed the chauffeur when he was in doubt, the old turnings of the streets coming back to her with astonishing sureness. At last, at Shepard Street, she told him to turn off the South Road, and at once they were in the maze of brick and mortar that had been Clark's Field,—the old Clark pasture. The bulky car had to move slowly through the narrow streets, much to the driver's impatience, and he had ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... that with such sureness?" she cried. "No, no, Major Carew; in your heart you know otherwise. But you just let her go away without a word, without a hope, and one or two of us know what this hasty engagement means. Diana calls it martyrdom. She wrote me to send Meryl an in memoriam card instead ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... recent textbook writers, which usually end with a rejection, "on the whole," of the logical implications of these newer concepts. Many teachers thus have lost their grip on any coordinating theory of distribution. They no longer have any general economic philosophy. The old Ricardian cock-sureness had its pedagogic merits. Without faith, teaching perishes. The complaints of growing difficulty in the teaching of the introductory course seem to have come particularly from teachers that are in this unhappy ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... the ladders ended. He stepped off upon a foot-wide beam, paused to make sure of his poise, and began to walk the girders with a sureness of foot ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... means to me complete control of the fingerboard, a being at home in every position, absolute sureness of fingering, absolute equality of tone under all circumstances. I remember Ysaye playing Tschaikovsky's Serenade Melancolique, and using a fingering for certain passages which I liked very much. I asked him to give it to me in detail, but he merely laughed and said: 'I'd like to, but I ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... afterwards, when, recovered from all that, Augustin speaks to us of the Divine love, he will know fully the infinite value of it from having gone through all the painful entrancements of the other. And he will say to us, with the sureness of experience: "The pleasure of the human heart in the light of truth and the abundance of wisdom—yea, the pleasure of the human heart, of the faithful heart, and of the heart which is holy, stands alone. You will find nothing ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... employed in prophecy to point out Christ, and the sureness and continuance of the Covenant, is also used by two apostles for the same purpose. Their references to it illustrate the doctrine, that, in the New Testament, types, though realized in Christ, and also partly illustrated in the blessings at any time bestowed by ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... blessing," and the priests blessed and read the ten commandments, "Hear,"(549) etc. "And it shall come to pass if ye shall hearken,"(550) etc. And "He spake,"(551) etc. They then gave the three blessings to the people, "Truth and Sureness," and "the Service," and "the Blessing of the Priests." And on the Sabbath they added one ...
— Hebrew Literature
... on to tell me that his mother had particularly admired my attitude toward my own mother, and the manner in which I met every little failing of hers. She felt I had a sense of true values in people, and that the simplicity and sureness with which I had met this situation was the essence ...
— The Log-Cabin Lady, An Anonymous Autobiography • Unknown
... death, had many subjects in it beside furniture and cabinet-making. His sideboards, card-tables, sewing-tables, tables of every kind, chairs—in fact, everything he made during his best period—have a sureness and beauty of line that makes it doubly sad that through the stress of circumstances he should have deserted it for the style of the Empire that was then the fashion in France. One or two of his Empire designs have beauty, but most of them are too dreadful, ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... with a broad Berserker blade. He hews, he hacks, he gashes. There is blood in his veins, and he does not spare the ink. But examine closely these little prints—some of them miracles of printing—and you may discern their delicate sureness, subtlety, and economy of gesture. Fitzroy Carrington quotes the Parisian critic Henri Marcel, who among other things wrote of the Zorn etchings: "Let us only say that these etchings—paradoxical in their coarseness of means ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... or reciting these, their little listener being always busy with pen or pencil. Something much more than mere precocity is shown in these almost infantine sketches. Exorbitant fancy is here much less striking than sureness of touch, outlined figures drawn between the age of five and ten displaying remarkable precision and point, each line of the silhouette telling. At six he celebrated his first school prize with an illustrated letter, two portraits and a ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... permanence for which critical literature generally cannot hope. Very many of the things that are said here are finally said; they exhaust their subject. Of one thing we are certain—that there is no work in English devoted to the interpretation of poetic experience which can claim the delicacy and sureness of ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... cotton, linen, and silk, to carpet our floors, cover our tables, cushion our chairs, and clothe our bodies; machines of which Vulcan never dreamed, to point a needle, bore a rifle, cut a watch wheel, or rule a series of lines, measuring forty thousand to an inch, with sureness which the unaided hand can never equal. Machinery is a triumph of handicraft as truly as sculpture and architecture. The fingers which can plan and build a steamship or a suspension bridge, which can make the Quinebaug and the Blackstone turn spindles ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... the Allies, and the whole world has recognized it. With the Allies there has been no boasting, even now when they realize that the top is reached and this war is on the down grade. There is determination, but there is no cock-sureness, no goose-step. There is ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... behind her. She turned east along the arroyo, followed it a mile, seeking a crossing, then doubled straight north toward the Cimarron. Captain Jack hung to her trail like a hound. In the blackness that preceded the storm she could not lose him. With almost uncanny sureness he picked her out—following, following, never giving the maverick a moment's rest. Yet it seemed that the distance she kept ahead was measured, so alert and watchful was she always. Both were dripping with sweat. ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... the gold-decked bow of Kripa. And they also, with many sharp-pointed shafts, that mighty car-warrior smote in great wrath, seeming to dance (the while). And beholding his lightness of hand, the very gods were gratified. And in consequence of Abhimanyu's sureness of aim, all the car-warriors headed by Bhishma regarded him to be possessed of the capacity of Dhananjaya himself.[335] And his bow, emitting a twang like that of Gandiva, while stretched and re-stretched, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... his hand to help her up. But he did not surrender her hand then, for the path up the slope was a deep and difficult one, and she could fairly rely on his strength and sureness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... a very splendid array of fossils it must have been, though the inevitable process of decay that had been staved off for a time, and had, through the extinction of bacteria and fungi, lost ninety-nine hundredths of its force, was nevertheless, with extreme sureness if with extreme slowness at work again upon all its treasures. Here and there I found traces of the little people in the shape of rare fossils broken to pieces or threaded in strings upon reeds. And the cases had in some instances ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call forth, but which he might display if these were greater. Most of us feel as if a sort of cloud weighed upon us, keeping us below our highest notch of clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning, or firmness in deciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources. In some persons this ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... Bogobos were one and all delighted with the military life of the post; with the drills and parades where the soldiers marched as one man; the evolutions wherein they were deployed, moved in echelon, or wheeled into position; and their sureness and quickness in the manual of arms. Then, too, the cleanliness of the barracks impressed them, and the personal neatness of the khaki-clad men, not to mention the very desirable things to eat ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... space, in radiant purity of light or depth and variety of colour, in penetrating and subtle sweetness of music, in supple mastery of the instrument, in vivid spontaneity of imagination, in clean-cut sureness of touch—Wordsworth is not surpassed by men who were below him in weight and greatness? Even in his own field of the simple and the pastoral has he touched so sweet and spontaneous a note as Burns's Daisy, or the Mouse? When men seek immersion or ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... somebody! Jude, before I married him I had never thought out fully what marriage meant, even though I knew. It was idiotic of me—there is no excuse. I was old enough, and I thought I was very experienced. So I rushed on, when I had got into that training school scrape, with all the cock-sureness of the fool that I was! ... I am certain one ought to be allowed to undo what one had done so ignorantly! I daresay it happens to lots of women, only they submit, and I kick... When people of a later age look back upon the barbarous customs and superstitions ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... the sureness in Skag's voice, that made some choking tightness way back in the boy's soul let go; whole vistas of possibilities ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... spectacular about it. There seldom is about serious mishaps in this business. The ice has risen only an inch or more so far, but the very slowness and sureness of it is what's alarming. It shows that the water is backing up, and as the flow increases the rise of the ice will quicken. If it starts to move up or down ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... apologetic little preamble, he would sit down and play these rococo bits of trailing sound with fingers dipped in lightning, fingers that flashed over the keys in perfect evenness and with perfect sureness. ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... and there he saw those whom he called "his people" walking across a neat English park toward a peaceful little English church. To them came presently a young person; a young person clad in pink cotton, who walked with a certain demure sureness of tread, as if she knew her own mind and other things besides. Her path came into the park from the left, and among the trees into which it disappeared behind her there stood the red chimneys of a long ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... with Him. There is no other way by which the externals can be made right than by setting a watch on the door of our hearts and minds, and this inward discipline must be put in force before there will be any continuity or sureness in the outward aim. We want, for that direction of the life of which I have been speaking, a clear perception and a concentrated purpose, and we shall not get either of these unless we fall back, by thought and meditation, upon the truths ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... by the lower track which you can see leading downward through those hills. I say dash off, but only if the enemy make for you. If you are not followed hasten slowly for your horses' sake. Remember that he who goes softly goes far, and I want sureness more than speed." ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... the consolation which a proud confidence in themselves gives to the unappreciated young, for in his heart of hearts he knew that he had as yet done nothing which deserved the highest praise. But his imagination was expanding with a steady sureness, and the long years of his apprenticeship ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... him. She felt his hand relax in hers, and she pressed it sympathetically, encouragingly. But she felt the rigidity going out of his tensed body, and she knew that spirit and flesh were relaxing together. His resolution was ebbing. He would not speak—she knew it; and she knew, likewise, with the sureness of faith, that it ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... Castlederry troubled her, and she tried to convince her son that Lord Castlederry was a well-meaning man, but, as she knew, without success. She had delighted in her husband's great courage and self-sufficiency, his sureness, his strong decision and his unconquerable pride and independence ... but now, in contemplation, these things frightened her ... she wondered sometimes why it was that they had not frightened her in his lifetime ... and the thought that ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... these discrepancies and, to some minds, blemishes there was a light in her deep gray eyes, a melody in her voice, a charm in her manner, a sureness of her being exactly the sort of woman one hoped she would be, a quick responsiveness to any confidence, all so captivating and so satisfying that 'those who knew her forgot her slight physical shortcomings and carried away only the remembrance of one so much out of ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... hours he discovered that he was lost. Then came the usual confusion of mind and the hurry to get somewhere. Mexico was anxious to redeem the situation, twisting with alacrity along the tortuous labyrinths of the jungle. At the moment his master's sureness of the route had failed his horse had divined the fact. There were no hills now that they could climb to obtain a view of the country. They came upon a few, but so dense and interlaced was the brush that scarcely could a rabbit penetrate ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... corpus of French lyric from the tenth to the fourteenth century might have been easily set before the public. But the two volumes above mentioned will enable the reader to judge its general characteristics with pretty absolute sureness; and if he desires to supplement them with the work of a single author, that of Thibaut of Champagne or Navarre,[128] which is easily accessible, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... to learn style so sure as by familiarity with nature, and by study of the great authors. Shakespeare can teach you all there is to be learned of the art of expression, and the rhetoric of a live trout leaping and darting with such ease and sureness ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... on the table. It marked the 2nd of October. On that day five years ago he had entered on his duties at Drane's Court. He laughed softly. Five years ago he was a homeless wanderer. Now princesses were begging him to rescue them from Egyptologists. With glorious sureness all his dreams ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Richard to see Munkacsy's picture of "Christ before Pilate," and notes Richard's astonishment at it. He considered it himself as one of the finest of existing pictures. He also expresses the great pleasure he derived from Jacquemart's water-colors, their brilliancy and sureness ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... more. We may, by accounting to ourselves for the immense variety of phenomena which are brought to light by the application of principles to facts, and in which nothing is absolute or permanent, in which, on the contrary, everything is relative and successive, acquire that sureness of touch and correctness of vision which are among the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... done, 'mlungu," exclaimed the king, with just the faintest suggestion of a feeling of relief in the tones of his voice; "that was marvellously well done! But for thy quickness and sureness of eye and hand I should have been overthrown, and the Basutos might have been obliged to choose another king. 'Mtala," to the induna, "let them see to yonder clumsy fool who allowed the buffalo to catch him; and if he be not dead let four of thy men ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... prepare for the descent. Hudson and I again consulted as to the best and safest arrangement of the party. We agreed that it would be best for Croz to go first, and Hadow second; Hudson, who was almost equal to a guide in sureness of foot, wished to be third; Lord Francis Douglas was placed next, and old Peter, the strongest of the remainder, after him. I suggested to Hudson that we should attach a rope to the rocks on our arrival at the difficult bit, and hold it as we descended, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... point where he himself dared go no farther. The choking vapors floated round him, but the Pit itself, yawning wide and terrible, was still some distance from where he stood. Now he must trust to the strength of his arm, to the sureness of his aim. He drew himself to his full height; he threw back his arm, and hurled the magic charcoal straight to its mark. "Descend into this Pit!" he cried, as it left his hand. "Descend, and make this evil place ...
— The Shadow Witch • Gertrude Crownfield
... landscape under Flamm, and in 1866 she settled in Munich, where she has since remained, making long visits to Paris, Venice, and parts of Switzerland. Her later work is marked by the romantic influence of C. Ludwig, who was for a time her instructor, but she shows unusual breadth and sureness in dealing with difficult subjects, such as dusky forests with dark waters or bare ruins bordered with stiff, ghost-like trees. Though not without talent and boldness, she lacks a ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... tiger in hand to hand combat, of which feat that Prince de Nassau boasted greatly. In our country, at that time, they were hunting wild boars; Rejtan had killed with his musket an immense sow, at great risk to himself, for he shot from close by. Each of us admired and praised the sureness of the aim; only the German, de Nassau, listened with indifference to such compliments, and, walking off, muttered in his beard that a sure aim proved only a bold eye, but that cold steel proved a bold hand; and once more he began to talk ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... judged the young man to be a product of rearing and environment. He had known spoiled youths at the Cape and, in their surroundings, they behaved much as Malcolm did in his. The same disrespect to their elders, the same cock-sureness, and the same careless indifference concerning the effect which their actions might have upon other people—these were natural and nothing but years and the hard knocks of experience could bring about a change. Elkanah Chase, country swell and pampered heir to the cranberry grower's ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was dark and cloudy Edna could not work. She needed the sun to mellow and temper her mood to the sticking point. She had reached a stage when she seemed to be no longer feeling her way, working, when in the humor, with sureness and ease. And being devoid of ambition, and striving not toward accomplishment, she drew satisfaction from the ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... was such a thing. Emmy was shy of the word, too; but not as shy as that. She was for a moment anxious, because she wanted him to say the word, or some equivalent. If it was not said, she was dependent upon his charity later, and would cry sleeplessly at night for want of sureness ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... simply the power of her intelligence; the precision, the promptitude, the rapidity (though her manner was by no means rapid), the largeness of the field of knowledge, the compressed outcome of which she was at any moment ready to bring to bear on the topic in hand; the sureness and lucidity of her induction; the clearness of vision, to which muddle was as impossible and abhorrent as a vacuum is supposed to be to nature; and all this lighted up and gilded by an infinite sense of, and capacity for, humour,—this was what rendered her to me ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... at him with straightforward keenness, and he saw the priest's eyelids move uneasily beneath his gaze. Mixing with many men as he had done, he had acquired a certain mental sureness of touch, like that of an artist with his brush when he has handled many subjects and many effects. He divined that Rene Drucquer had been led to expect a violent, head strong man, and he could not restrain a smile as ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... some twenty minutes; and Tinker's skill, sureness, and lightness of movement was the prettiest sight. Sometimes, with a snorting bleat, Billy would turn sharply at the end of his charge, and charge again; then the concentration on the matter in hand, which his ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... enthusiasm for his latest acquisition, but some of the cock-sureness had been knocked out of him by ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... of looking her best gave her manner a light sureness that was very charming. But from the moment they entered the FOYER, Ephie's heart began to sink: the crowd was great; she could not see Schilsky; and in his place came Dove, who was not to be shaken off. Even Maurice was bad enough—what concern of his ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... mean more to me than any marriage could, don't you see that? You know what my childhood was, Mark; my mother didn't love my father—" And as a sudden memory of the old life rose to confront her, Julia's tone became firm; she felt a certain sureness. "Married people ought to love each other, Mark," she said positively. "I know that. And I won't—I never will marry a man I don't love. If everything goes wrong, after that, you have only yourself to blame. And so many times ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... with the Red Cross badge, working, working with the same feverish haste with which he kept at his task. A sort of dreadful haze came over him. He labored with desperate haste, with strong certainty and sureness of touch, but he seemed to feel nothing of human anguish or human sympathy. He was a machine set in motion by the pressing needs of battle, and he went on and on in a haze. Men died in his arms or were transported to the First Aid where ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... a groan as everybody heard that unmistakable whack that resounds whenever the bat and the ball meet face to face. But the very sureness of the hit was its ruination, for it went soaring like a carrier-pigeon straight home to the hands of Sleepy, who, without moving from his place, reached up and ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... have been corrected by several attempts, the method gives a confidence, a sense of sureness, which makes the real telling to a real audience ready and spontaneously smooth. Scarcely an epithet or a sentence comes out as it was in the preliminary telling; but epithets and sentences in sufficiency do come; the beauty ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... leaning back. His eyes were closed, one could not tell in that moment that he was blind, but it was more than the dimness, the blankness in his eyes, more than scarred eyeballs, made for the change in Karl's face. He and life did not dwell together as they had once; a freedom and a gladness and a sureness had gone. The loss of those things meant the loss of something fundamentally Karl. And the sadness—and the longing—and the marks of struggle which the light of ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... is not book-learning or critical lore, but knowledge how to make, by which man becomes a creator in imitation of God; for this is of necessity the most perfect knowledge, rivalling the sureness of ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... these trophies were one or two rough sketches of the mountain regions beyond Kashmir; desolate stretches of glacier and moraine, or groups of stately peaks, the colouring washed in with a singular sureness of touch. There were also maps, finely executed by hand, of Thibet and Central Asia. To these fresh names and markings were added, from time to time, with a thrill of satisfaction only to be gauged by the man for whom the waste places of earth are a goodly heritage, and who would sooner contribute ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... curious and exceptional cases of "fatherless reproduction" by means of true egg-cells, those cells of special nature produced in the organs called "ovaries," present in all but the simplest animals and plants. These egg-cells are usually, with elaborate sureness and precise mechanism after liberation from the ovary, fertilised by (that is to say, fused with) the complemental reproductive cells—the sperm-filaments—produced by other ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... speakers and lawyers of such eminence that they took their pick of clients and charged all the fee that policy would allow. In debate, there was a wilful aggressiveness, a fiery sureness, a lofty certainty, that moved judges and juries to do their bidding. Henry Cabot Lodge says that so great was Hamilton's renown as a lawyer that clients flocked to him because the belief was abroad that no judge dare decide against him. With Burr ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the two beautiful lakes of Thun and Brientz. On first coming among mountains, Amabel had been greatly afraid of the precipices, and had been very much alarmed at the way in which Guy clambered about, with a sureness of foot and steadiness of head acquired long ago on the crags of Redclyffe, and on which the guides were always complimenting him; but from seeing him always come down safe, and from having been enticed by him to ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... complexion of it: saw, in fact, a world getting into flame,—kindled by whom or what nobody could guess, for a long time to come. Gortz had great running about in his cloak of darkness, and showed abundant talent of the kind needed. A pushing, clear-eyed, stout-hearted man; much cleverness and sureness in what he did and forbore to do. His adventures were manifold; he had much travelling about: was at Regensburg, at Mannheim; saw many persons whom he had to judge of on the instant, and speak frankly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... flying, as we watched it from below, it seemed the safest and simplest thing in the world. The machines left the ground so easily, and mounted and descended with such sureness of movement, that I was impatient to begin my training. I believed that I could fly at once, after a few minutes of preliminary instruction, without first going through with all the tedious rolling along the ground in low-powered machines. But before the morning's work ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... favourite bird, the goldfinch. All over this vast expanse, which many would have called a waste, there were strings of them, chasing each other in their wavy flight, twittering on the downward stretch, darting in among the bushes, turning with incredible swiftness and sureness of wing the shortest of curves about a branch, and undulating away again ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove |
